WASHINGTON, D.C. -- It was well after lunch time, but Dan Maffei had only eaten a slice of bread and orange juice.

The Democratic congressman from Syracuse doesn't plan to eat until dinnertime.

He's been living on a food stamp budget of $4.20 a day since Saturday as part of the SNAP Challenge. (SNAP is the official name of food stamps). And he's hungry.

The amount is not enough for people to rely on it as their sole source of food, Maffei said. Data shows that, on average, people who depend on food stamps to buy their groceries are able to pay for about two and a half weeks of meals.

The rest often comes from food banks. The program is designed to be a supplement to other income, but for many families, that's not the case.

At the beginning of his week, Maffei bought hot dogs, pasta and sauce, cheese, orange juice, a loaf of white bread, breakfast buns, broccoli and a head of lettuce. He spent $20.50. He has $4.70 to buy food for Thursday, his last day. (50 cents of that is left over from his weekend shopping trip).

Rep. Dan Maffei, D-Syracuse, has been eating about one meal a day while he's living on a food stamp budget of $4.20 a day. This is one of his dinners from earlier this week. Provided photo | Re

What did he learn? It's hard to shop for healthy food on that tight of a budget. "I wasn't the smartest," he said. "Beans and rice would have been better."

Maffei said he's been eating about one meal a day: dinner. Tonight he planned to have hot dogs, cheese and lettuce.

Maffei said he noticed that the cheapest food was often not the best quality. White bread, for instance, was 50 cents cheaper than the whole wheat, so he bought that.

"It costs more to eat healthy," he said.

And it hard to watch other people eat when you're hungry. He had a breakfast meeting this morning and watched as pastries and coffee were passed around.

Maffei voted for the most recent farm bill, which cut food stamps by $8.7 billion over 10 years. The bill also included crop insurance, dairy price supports and other subsidies that Maffei couldn't vote against.

He said he would like to see the food stamp cuts restored, but he's not sure that will happen.

More than 40,700 households in the four counties around Syracuse use food stamps. In New York state, more than 1.1 million households use food stamps.